What We Needed
by tobia
Summary: Cassie would not have gone. Rachel would have. This is the skin in which I will die. Slight AU of 54. Spoilers for 54, implied character death, and canon character death, talk of suicide. Reviews greatly appreciated!


**What We Needed**

**Author's note: I figured I would take a stab at this, as it's been flouting around in my mind lightly. Slight AU to 54—namely, the two military recruits that go on the mission aren't in it. Spoilers for 54. Implied character death, talk of canon character death, talk—kind of—of suicide. **

**Reviews, including concrit, much appreciated! The tense shift is deliberate. **

Cassie would not have gone.

I had fought this war, of course. Like the others, I had fought it until it scarred my soul and haunted my dreams, until it all but turned me inside out and ate me alive. I had sold my adolescent wholesale for this seemingly endless, hopeless, mismatched war.

I had fought, yes. I have killed and murdered and bitten through flesh. I had lied and cheated. I did all the war required of me, all that was asked. I made myself wild and primal, pure instinct, nothing but survival.

But I had regretted it. It had chaffed at my skin and at my soul. It had rubbed me the wrong way. Some people, like Rachel, fit almost seamlessly into war. I am not one of them.

Need proof? That time when I left? When I turned my back and walked away? I don't regret it. Sometimes, I wish I had stayed away. Even though I know what that would have cost.

Humans had won the war, but in many ways, we, the Animorphs, had lost. Jake. Tobias. Even Marco, seemingly happy Macro, secretly itched for the life of excitement he had left behind, secretly knew little but a life of brutal combat. Rachel had not been the only causality of the war.

I myself, of course, was not unscathed. I still had the nightmares. I still woke up drenched in sweat. My hands have not been cleansed of blood. They never will be.

But I lived, too. I had a job. I had a boyfriend. I could pay the bills. I had friends who stayed in one shape. In many ways, I had only died a quarter death from war. It was more than the others could say.

I was the lucky one. I had survived.

So, when Jake told me to stay, I was secretly relived. Relived to be done. Relived to be at rest.

But I am not just me, you see. I am a wolf. An osprey. An ant. A squirrel. A Hork Bajir.

And I am Rachel.

And Rachel, she would have gone.

After Jake flies away, I kiss Ronnie on the cheek. "I need to have some time alone," I say, and he nods, sweet, sympathetic Ronnie. Someone who does not quite realize just how many millions of times I've had to lie.

I walk away.

Quietly, I morph into an osprey and follow Jake. When he stops and lands, I land a few hundred feet away and demorph. I look at my skin, taking in its warm chocolate hue, skin of which I have always been proud. The skin in which I was born.

Then, I focus on a different skin tone, a different face. A face I had known for decades. A face that I will never forget. This is the skin in which I will die.

I feel myself grow taller and my facial features shift slightly. My hair disappears into my scalp and then shoots back out again, lighter, thinner, longer. Below my mind, I can feel that recklessness stir in me, an energy, an impatience that is not my own.

I have become the person who would go.

I touch the skin lightly, drawing a think, pale hand lightly over my face.

"Thank you," I whisper and feel those fierce blue eyes feel with just the slightest hint of tears.

I walk out and find Jake, Tobias, and Macro preparing to board the ships, their back turned.

"Hey," I call out, and they all spin around. For all intents and purposes, they are seeing a ghost.

(Rachel?), Tobias thoughtspeaks, the word quivering in disbelief. Jake and Macro stare, suspicious, scared, stunned. I shake my head and concentrate, hard, until the straight golden locks on my head begin to curl and darken.

"Cassie?" Jake practically hisses. "I told us to stay."

"Yeah," I say, morphing all the way back to my new form. "You told Cassie to stay."

"This is insane," Macro says. "You're no more Rachel than I'm a lobster."

"Or Tobias is a hawk?" I ask and watch his fierce eyes flinch away .

"All those hours you spent as a gorilla?" I stare at Macro. "Or a tiger?" Jake. "You never felt like they were part of you?"

"Not enough to _die_ for them!" Macro snaps, and the truth hits us all again. If we go on this mission, we _will_ die.

"Rachel would have gone," I say, slightly less confident.

"Yes," Jake said. "She did go. And she did die." His eyes are dark.

"And if she was here today, would she have stayed here? If you had asked her, Jake, would she have turned you down?"

(YOU'RE NOT HER!) Tobias screams in thoughtspeak so loud it seems to ricochet off my skull.

I turn to him. "You don't think I loved her, too? You don't think my heart broke to see my best friend die? You don't think I remember? God, you all really think I'm actually okay, don't you?"

"You're the best of any us," Jake answers, well aware that even winning that contest. "You have a life."

"So do you. Any one of you, you have things to live for. Thermals. Supermodels. Sports Illustrated. Your families. The moments when you, just for a second, forget this all happened. The moments when you actually think things may actually be okay."

"And yet, you are all going. Because that's what we do. It's what we've done since we were thirteen. We fought, even when we knew it was hopeless. We fought, against all odds and all sanity and all safety. And you are doing that now. And so am I. So is she."

(Rachel… wouldn't have wanted to die twice.) Tobias said. (She didn't even wasn't to die once. She wasn't suicidal.)

"She didn't want to die," I say. "But she wanted to fight. She still would."

"She wouldn't want to see you dead. She would have called you an idiot," Jake says, his eyes pleading in a way his voice is not.

"This was my war, too, " I say. "I can choose to fight."

"So why go as Rachel, then?" Marco asks, pissed. "If you want to sign up for this suicide mission, do it for yourself, not for someone who already paid the price."

"She would have gone," I say again, "Because we needed her."

I see the truth sink in. We needed Rachel to fight the war. We needed her to be brave and strong and reckless. We needed her to charge ahead. She would have gone because we needed her. We needed her because she would have gone.

I relinquish my mind to the morph and find in it a part I don't have in mine. A part that, while scared, terrified even, will charge ahead. A part that will always go. A part that is both supremely stupid and supremely brave. A part that, regardless of the outcome, will win the war.

"Let's do it," I say, and we move towards the ship.


End file.
